New user observations/questions:

[pawn]

I've been playing with SageTV for few days now and would like to say I'm extremely happy. What an upgrade from ATi's MMC junk. I was absolutely happy to pay the $59.99.

I would also like to post these comments and questions (see system config at end):

(IMO) bugs:

- Java version 1.4.1 crash problem. IMO, this should mentioned prominently in the setup program or on the download site, people only go to Troubleshooting sources after a problem occurs, and this is a bad one that could casue a file system failure

- hotkey to bring Sage out of sleep mode: even the "-awake" commnd line option is kind of flaky. There should be a dependable hot key to wake Sage up

- Not a big deal, but towards the end of the Helpfile, it still says "at this time, multiple tuners are not supported"

- TV aspect not right at first - there's something funny that happnes when you first change decoding filters with the aspect ratio (i.e., I use forced 16:9, and it doesn't work in windowed mode at first, then it does after a few tries)

- main window doesn't come up centre at first (position not remembered)

- weird info buttom problem - the info popup can't be closed until right clicking on the screen again then closing

- slow channel changing. Very slow. Not sure what could be done about this. It would be nice if you could change the channel a binch of times, and Sage only tries tune in once I'm finished flipping

- weird overlay settings glitch - the Video Capture Settings (Advanced) dialogue somehow hides behind the rest of Sage when in full screen mode, must minimze Sage in the taskbar to access

- video stutter every 10 or 15 seconds. Seems a few other people have this problem as well (not horribly bad, but annoying)

- need hot key for deleting recordings from guide

- both tuners record same show if a Favourite is playing on more than one station at the same time


Comment:

If anyone's interested, IMO, the Cyberlink PowerDVD v4 filters seem to give the best quality in Sage, even for sports. I've tried all of the filters listed at the end of this post. Weird, since they're pretty much the worst I have for DVD playback. Just an opinion.


Questions:


1. do recording quality options affect live TV quality?

2. can TV be watched purely live (not timeshifting/recording)

3. how does the favourites work with respect to first runs/re-reruns? Any differentiation?

4. how does disk cleanup work? In what order is stuff deleted? Is it configurable?

5. how does the library work? Does do shows stay in the Sage Guide forever unless I manually transfer them? If so, a hot key would be nice.

6. are there per-show recording settings?

7. can the library be sorted at all? It would be nice to be able to sort the Library by date


Once again: nice software. Here's my system:

Pentium IV 1.8 GHz, 512 MB DDR
Asus P4PE Motherboard
Using the onboard SoundMaxx on the board above
Using onboard Ethernet on the board above
ATI Radeon AIW 7500 w/Catalyst 3.2 Display Driver, Capture Drivers & Control Panel
WD 20 GB + WD 120 GB Hard drives
WindowsXP Home, SP1
DX9.0a, WME9
Misc.: Sonic Cinemaster 1.5 filters , Intervideo filters, Ravisent Cineplayer filters, Cyberlink (version 4) filters
SageTV v 1.2.8

[dkardatzke]

1. Yes, recording quality options do affect live TV quality because "Live TV" is actually being recorded and played back as you are watching it similar to a TiVo. Any recording quality changes will only take affect after you change the channel or wait until the next recording starts.

2. There is no pass through option for Live TV without timeshifting/recording. The reason being that you wouldn't be able to Pause or Instant Replay Live TV. Or tell SageTV to record the show half way through watching it.

3. You can set your favorites to record first run, re-run or both. Go to Favorites Manager in the Setup menu to change these settings.

4. Diskspace is managed by telling SageTV what to use in Detailed Setup > General settings for each drive/folder specified. Shows are deleted beginning with the oldest first by starting with shows that were recorded with Intelligent recording getting deleted first. If you filled all your allocated space with Favorites and Manual recordings. It would begin to delete your oldest Favorites first.

5. Files in the Library never get deleted by Sage, they must be manually deleted by selecting Options and then telling SageTV to delete the file. You can move shows to the Library by going through the Options menu on that particular recorded show in the SageGuide.

6. Yes, accessible through options

7. No sort features yet for the library. Release version 1.3 will add more options to view your music by artist, album, etc.

[pawn]

Thanks for the response.

Further to the Sage Recordings and Library:

So, do the recorded shows stay in the guide indefinitely (i.e., until disk space is used up)? And how about the idea of a delete hot-key in the guide? Even allowing the normal keyboard delete key to function would work.

Thanks again.

[jimbobuk]

I am pretty sure that i am getting some favourites deleted before inteligent recorded ones...

i have 2 shows i want to watch every day.. one of my main reasons for a PVR solution... i've not had chance to keep up with them but i only now have one show from friday, mon, tue, wed, thur have been deleted... and i lost one days show of the other show.... I guess its possible my favourites could of used up all the space... would it be possible to get a user friendly log of what has happened to recordings and why.. possibly accessed within sage, or just opened as a text file...

It'd be nice to know why a show was deleted and not another to scuplt my management of recordings better suited to avoiding this...

White boxed recordings are favourites
Italics are watched
What are yellow boxed recordings?!?!

[jimbobuk]

now i look over my faves its probably ok.. i've lost a lot of stuff too... intelligent recorded stuff mainly is filling up my buffer and deleting older favourites.. are watched recordings deleted first!?? could i specify that intelligent recordings only delete intelligent recordings... NEVER going over favourites.. ESPECIALLY unwatched favourites?

I'm less concerned about it not being able to actually record its guesses if I get to keep my unwatched favourites...

[dkardatzke]

Watched favorites will get deleted when space is needed because you've watched the show. If you don't want SageTV to delete the show, remove the watched aspect or move it to the Library.

A future version of SageTV will have an option in the Favorites Manager to tell SageTV how many episodes of a particular favorite to solve this issue.

Yellow box recordings are manual recordings.

[pawn]

I just installed the 1.3.4 Beta. The only changes are:

1. The options dialog problem is gone.
2. The video settings dialog under Detailed Setup/Multimedia is now worse: you can't even minimize the main window now and must shut down Sage with Task manager.

More importantly, the problem with both tuners recording the same "Favourite" if two different channels are showing it still exists. This one is huge (IMO) since most popular shows are usually on more than one channel.

BTW, this problem goes a little deeper:

When you go to switch channels while both tuners are recording, the "Do you want to continue recording or switch channels...." popup comes up, So, if I say "change channels" and watch something else, then switch channels again, the same popup comes up, and again, and again. Very annoying. This happens with both version 1.2.8 and 1.3.4.

It seems to me, once you decide to switch channels and stop recording, you should never see this poup again.

I only offer the above as helpful comments. So far I 'm blown away by Sage.

[pawn]

Ahhh...this latter problem (the "Would you like to stop recording and watch..." nag) only happens when you actually switch to the channel that is displaying the "Favourite".

Obviously the program is flagged as a "Favourite" and is being recorded (since everything gets recorded when you watch) so Sage jumps to the conclusion that you are switching from a scheduled recording (even though you already told it to abandon the recording).

Wouldn't be much of a problem, except when coupled with the other problem where bothtunders are recording the same "Favourite".

Should be easy to fix.

[Narflex]

Even if both tuners say they're recording the same thing, they're actually not. Only one of them is doing it. What happens is the second one was planning on recording it, but the first ended up defaulting to it. So when the second realizes this, it doesn't record anything, but the schedule remains as is.

[pawn]

Originally posted by Narflex
Even if both tuners say they're recording the same thing, they're actually not. Only one of them is doing it. What happens is the second one was planning on recording it, but the first ended up defaulting to it. So when the second realizes this, it doesn't record anything, but the schedule remains as is.


I can personally gurantee both tuners are at least think they're recording the same show (on different channels).

Example:

- Last night, both tuners were scheduled to record Everybody Loves Raymond. One on channel 3 and the second on channel 5.

- at 2 minutes to 9:00pm, the reminder about "in 2 minutes..." comes up, I tell it OK switch.

- it switches at 9:00pm.

- I try changing channels

- the nag about ""Would you like to stop recording and watch..." comes up
for the recording on channel 5 (BTW, I mean "nag" in the nicest possible way ;^)

- I respond "No" (i.e., keep recording)

- Then...(and here's my point) the nag comes up again (without me doing anything beyond already described) "Would you like to stop recording and watch..." but this time, for channel 3.

And as previously stated, even if I tell it to stop recording on one of the channels, the nag will come up again if I happen to change channels to Eveybody Loves Raymond and try switch channels again.

This happened to me many times yesterday (after I went through the guide and picked a bunch of Favourites).

I should probably tell you I'm using the XMLTV plugin for guide data. And I'm just about to make a seperate post for some of the others using XMLTV, that all shows in my guide show up as "First Run"

Thanks for your response (and nice work).

[dkardatzke]

This may have to do with the XMLTV data not being specific enough for SageTV to decipher the First Runs. Look at the detailed info for your First Runs to see if you have any identifiers for the show i.e. episode name, or show id.

[jimbobuk]

XMLTV in the uk aint great for that.. i get a lot of the same show recorded... i also get different names for the same show on different days.. quite a pain...

Watched favorites will get deleted when space is needed because you've watched the show. If you don't want SageTV to delete the show, remove the watched aspect or move it to the Library.

If i get it right though if you run out of space unwatched favourites will eventually get overwritten... oldest first... I get a lot of favourites recorded as i say above some of my shows get double recorded.... i appreciate that i can maintain my own files but sometimes you are busy... i think it would be good that in a situation where space has ran out and unwatched favourites are at risk... if only another favourite or manual recording can overwrite a favourite/unwatched favourite...

Deletion goes like this at the moment!??

Oldest watched intelligently recorded programmes
unwatched intelligently recorded programmes
watched manual recordings or favourites
unwatched manual recordings or favourites

So the only way favourites will EVER get touched is after ALL intelligent recordings have been deleted!?? I am sure this isn't happening for me... although maybe whats more likely is

i) my machine records all day... runs out of space... starts deleting intelligent recordings...
ii) records favourites or scheduled recordings losing more space effectively squeezing out all intelligently recorded material
iii) finally the next intelligent recorded material starts and there is no intelligent ones left so it starts going over favourites for an intelligent recorded one..

I just think an option for iii) to only happen with favourites would reduce favourites being deleted by intelligent recorded stuff... i guess the problem could be i'm running out of space and recording a lot of shows as favourites... again as i said XMLTV recording everything of a program doesn't help, but i appreciate that is way out of your control :)

[pawn]

Originally posted by dkardatzke
This may have to do with the XMLTV data not being specific enough for SageTV to decipher the First Runs. Look at the detailed info for your First Runs to see if you have any identifiers for the show i.e. episode name, or show id.


Even so, it would be a fairly trivial task to add a few lines of code for us XMLTV'ers to ensure two programs of the exact same name are not recording simultaneously, right?

Furthermore, I would say the second part of the problem (where I keep being asked if I want to stop recording, even after I have cancelled recording) is a bug, which would also be fairly easily fixed. Of course, I could be wrong, just pointing it out.

Thanks for the responses ---> it is appreciated.

[Narflex]

It is anything but trivial to determine if two programs are the same. The reason its recording two of what appears to be the same thing is because as far as it knows they are not. There is EXTENSIVE additional data included in our datastream that allows us to perform these correlations. The XMLTV data does not have this information and so Sage can't always determine uniqueness correctly with XMLTV.

And if you think it's trivial, did you know that a lot of shows have the exact same description and all of their information is identical, but they're different shows? That one took me a LONG time to figure out how to determine, I've even seen a presentation from Tivo's CTO saying that's one of the hardest problems too.

:dance:

Sorry to be authoritative about this, but I wanted to give the solid reasons why this occurs.

Thanks. :)

[pawn]

Originally posted by Narflex
It is anything but trivial to determine if two programs are the same. The reason its recording two of what appears to be the same thing is because as far as it knows they are not. There is EXTENSIVE additional data included in our datastream that allows us to perform these correlations. The XMLTV data does not have this information and so Sage can't always determine uniqueness correctly with XMLTV.

And if you think it's trivial, did you know that a lot of shows have the exact same description and all of their information is identical, but they're different shows? That one took me a LONG time to figure out how to determine, I've even seen a presentation from Tivo's CTO saying that's one of the hardest problems too.

:dance:

Sorry to be authoritative about this, but I wanted to give the solid reasons why this occurs.

Thanks. :)

Authority accepted and I hope you don't interpret my comments as criticism.

But, really, two shows with the exact same name at the exact same time: don't record both. Simple.

I think it would be rare for a rerun to be broadcast simultaneously with a first run. And if not, so one rerun recording slips through the cracks?

In fact, I'd go even further and provide an option where only one tuner is used for scheduled/intelligent recording and the other is free for live TV and manual recordings (or, of course, the user could leave things as is).

Just my opinion, probably worthless, but thanks for the response either way.

[Lester Jacobs]

Originally posted by pawn
Authority accepted and I hope you don't interpret my comments as criticism.

But, really, two shows with the exact same name at the exact same time: don't record both. Simple.

I think it would be rare for a rerun to be broadcast simultaneously with a first run. And if not, so one rerun recording slips through the cracks?

In fact, I'd go even further and provide an option where only one tuner is used for scheduled/intelligent recording and the other is free for live TV and manual recordings (or, of course, the user could leave things as is).

Just my opinion, probably worthless, but thanks for the response either way.

pawn,

In most cases the XMLTV data is not comprehensive enough to uniquely identify shows. As Jeff said, it is not enough to simply compare names. That may work for your shows but it certainly doesn't work for all shows. When the plugin cannot assign a show a unique ID, it takes the safe way out and makes the show unique. The reasoning is that it is better to risk recording too much rather than missing a recording. The XMLTV data is free but you get what you pay for :) I can tell you that as soon as Frey supports Canada, I'm switching to their listings, free or not.

Oh, and while it is technically possible for the plugin to compare all the shows in the data against each other to do a better guess at uniqueness, it is not feasible in a reasonable timeframe. That is, unless your idea of reasonable is waiting a couple of hours for the guide data to update (SageTV may even timeout in a case like that, I don't know).

So, the plugin is doing the best it can with the data it's got. It's not perfect, but it at least provides those outside the Sage service area with a fairly good crutch while we await the Sage listings rollout.

Cheers
Lester